Extremely Pointless
by Alardem
Summary: A mute killing machine, a cynical lieutenant and a loony medic make their way through a city gone bananas. Parody of Extraction Point.
1. Chapter 1

**Extremely Pointless**

Interval 1a: Hangover

The F.E.A.R. Point Man awoke with his face buried in a carpet, and immediately rolled onto his back to assess the new situation. The charred remains of his Blackhawk protruded through the crumpled wall of a rotting apartment kitchen, its rotors conspicuously missing and its engine still freshly burning out columns of smoke that blotted out the sun outside. The pilot lay beside the Point Man's feet, missing his clothes, head and flesh – a clear sign that SHE was still loose. Directly above him lay a hole in the ceiling, where two shuddering figures were coming to. The Point Man assessed his own body, satisfied to find no serious lacerations, bruises, broken bones or tears in his uniform. Even his red goggles remained intact atop his balaclava, medically assuring him that he was at 100%.

The Point Man got to his feet, body feeling as though it had just survived a helicopter crash, and struggled to recall the events immediately preceding said mechanical failure. That pale woman, that stringy-haired walking skeleton, that infernal giggling specter, that tormented victim of scientific advancement, **Alma,** had revealed herself to be his mother. He'd just repelled her in a twisted memory of his birth, using the last remaining clip of his sidearm, desperately attempting and failing to escape the thermonuclear blast he had created. He had awoken hours later, barely breathing but fully assured the mission was over. Then, (he scratched his head) she returned to finish the job, and he could not remember what happened next.

"What a surprise," groaned Lieutenant Douglas Holiday, his black eyes peering down at the motionless super-soldier. "He survived." The African-American soldier pinned himself against a kitchen counter, holding a bleeding cast on his right leg, and evidently had incurred several superficial scars and bruises upon his dark cheeks and forehead. Even his moustache was split down the middle. However, he, and the slender Asian woman beside him, were not critically injured and that would be good enough to continue the mission.

"Oh, Bremmer…" sighed Jin Sun-Kwon, wiping the dust that liberally caked itself over her face and holding a thin gash in her belly. "Of all the times you could have slept, you chose NOW?" The Point Man glanced at the dead pilot once more – just what had Alma done to him?

"Hey, Silent Bob," growled Holiday, gently attempting to help up Jin and being flatly rebuffed. "Here's the situation: your team's helicopter pilot decided to fall asleep and die at the same time the chopper's engine went kaput and the rotors flew off. Communications are still down all over the city. I haven't seen anything alive here, aside from Jin – not even fucking cockroaches. We have no fucking clue what's going on." He sighed heavily, and Jin cut in.

"Betters should be sending in a rescue team any time now," she said, stretching her limbs and thoughtfully staring at the dark corners of the building. "That is, if Armacham isn't cutting us off…"

"Those bastards have enough on their hands," Holiday replied, moving away from the hole and gesturing for Jin to follow. Without looking back, he called out to the man beneath him.

"We'll meet up at the bottom of this building. I can't be assed to jump down a hole and break my leg again."

The Point Man nodded, activated his headlamp, and moved to escape the smoldering kitchen. He paused, then rifled through the fridge. His rabid kleptomania was rewarded with an inexplicable, fully loaded AT-14 pistol, which he eagerly took. He traversed the crumbling building in a matter of minutes, noting that while there were hot coffee mugs and recently worn sneakers lying around the premises, the ancient complex was practically a disaster waiting to happen. The lack of civilians became a secondary concern when he crawled out of a hole in the cardboard walls and found a brilliantly hazardous electrical current dancing out from a burning fuse box. Ten seconds later, he found the power room and opened the door.

There she was. Not woman, not girl, but both – a twisted horror caught in the crossroads between life and death, a being unsure of her own identity but certain about her love for hating everyone and making little angels in the ground with their blood.

And there she wasn't. The Point Man shrugged, shut off the power, and kicked down the fire exit door. He blinked reflexively at the sad grey morning light that bathed an absolutely dead street avenue. Dead in the metaphorical sense – the rotting bodies of blue-clad Armacham thugs and collapsed Replica soldiers lay crumpled over a pair of strategically placed crown Victoria cars, tarnishing an otherwise inoffensively dull street with streaks of crimson and flecks of scattered brass. A church lay at the far end of the street, overly large and almost distracting the Point Man from the far more enormous figure that loomed over the entire sky. He frowned at the sheer impossibility of the colossal thing, and dismissed it as he policed the ammo dropped by the dead soldiers.

Mushroom clouds weren't supposed to look like gigantic hearts with an A in the center.

To his left lay the back lot of the burning apartment building, where a live Replica soldier stood before him – loudly snoring as his prone figure was propped up on a pile of discarded top parts. The Point Man held his fire, training his pistol on the two figures who were gracelessly making their way down the fire escape beside the unconscious clone. Jin peered fascinatingly at the soldier, running her hand up his body as though he were a new car model, while Holiday regarded it with the same respect afforded to a slug.

"Why's he asleep?" he muttered.

"Dormant," Jin said, smiling as she tried to wrench off the Replica's helmet and found it to be impractical. "When Fettel was eliminated, the Replicas deactivated."

Holiday brought his assault rifle up and fired two bullets into the back of the clone's skull. The corpse let out a weak giggle before falling silent, and Jin shrieked quietly. "I wanted to examine him!" she pouted, . Holiday shrugged, and then pretended to see the Point Man for the first time.

"Hey, good job on making them easy targets," he chuckled grimly, placing his fingers on the chain-link fence. He bit his lip, tested his weight on the fence, and then realized that Jin had already vaulted over the fence and was standing beside the Point Man. He swore, and with Jin's encouragement crawled over the 6-foot fence in a matter of seconds.

"Well," the Delta squad leader said, leading the group down the road. "Now all we have to worry about is-" He took a look at the sky and found that he was unable to speak coherently. Jin whistled appreciatively, and took a picture of the cloud with her camera.

"It's Alma. She's responsible."

Of course, the Point Man thought. She wasn't done yet. But why had she spared the three of them?

Holiday's legs were wobbly and he crouched down, holding his forehead in contrition. He glared up at the emotionless, unresponsive Point Man, and suddenly let out a cry of rage as he thrust his weapon at the soldier's forehead. The Point Man effortlessly dodged the attack and silently stared at him, incomprehensible and thoughtless.

"You idiot!" he roared. "You didn't do shit! You've killed hundreds of civilians and this fucking ghost bitch thinks it's a fucking riot! You FUBAR'd this situation!"

"Doug," Jin whispered, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We can court martial him when we get out of this." The Point Man tilted his head at the threat, and she gave him an ambiguous glare. "For now – we need to focus on better things. Like where to go next."

Holiday shook her off, and wordlessly led them down the road. Along the way, they found sleeping Replicas sprawled all over the place. Replicas silhouetted by the headlights of an idle truck, Replicas atop ledges, Replicas on the sidewalk, Replicas intimately holding each other. The Point Man took care to cave in the skulls of each and every clone he found – his knuckles were getting pretty sore. When they got to the church, Holiday finally spoke up.

"Thanks, God. You're doing a brilliant job at being an asshole. Keep up the good douchery."

An enormous airplane burst out of the clouds, its jet engines on fire, and crashed a few dozen blocks behind the church. The lack of any human reaction to the disaster meant that Holiday felt free to chuckle.

"That was our ride, wasn't it," the Delta said. "Yep," Jin replied.

"Should I just blame Alma for every spooky thing that happens from now on?"

"I suppose."

The Point Man said nothing, instead kicking open the velvet church door and standing stock still. The other two ran up behind him, and found themselves frozen in dumbstruck confusion.

Ten or so Replicas lined the room, filling the church pews and training their weapons upon the trio. A willowy man stood behind the pulpit, his figure surrounded by a thin red aura. His leather jacket was scuffed and charred, his fingers were dirty, and his face was smeared with fresh crimson. Almost lazily, the man yawned and raised his face to reveal a gruesome hole in the center of his skull. He grinned, showing bloody teeth, and spoke.

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated."

"But…" Holiday stammered. "He shot you in the head."

"Yes. So what? I know it doesn't make sense. Not much does-"

"It does a little bit," Jin cut in. "Powerful psychics are capable of retaining their telesthetic signature even after physical death-"

"Silence, my dear, or you'll be the first to die. Or the last." Fettel licked his lips, and Holiday glanced at the Point Man. The soldier's body language was undecipherable, but Holiday prayed to the much-maligned God that he had a plan to get them out of this.

"How's being dead feel, asshole?" Holiday growled. "Couldn't handle this badass motherfucker, couldn't you?"

"I take offense to what you said about mothers, you mindless drone." Fettel felt his forehead, and grimaced at the pain. At that moment of confusion, the Point Man fired upon the specter and Holiday desperately swept a line of fire across the stack of Replicas. A horribly high-pitched scream cut through the air, and the Replicas simultaneously held their crotches and collapsed, rendered unconscious by an overwhelming surge of pain. Holiday quickly ensured that the downed clones were executed, and then angrily ran around the church, calling out for Fettel.

"Relax, big guy – he left crying for mommy." Jin was flashing a thumbs-up to the Point Man. Holiday looked at the soldier in confusion, and the F.E.A.R. Point Man innocently pointed to his gun and to his crotch. Doug grinned. The son of a bitch might be dead, but he could still feel pain.

Speaking of mommy, the horrible undead woman let out an ear-splitting shriek of anguish and the floor at the center of the church suddenly erupted, plummeting upwards into a gaping black void in the ceiling before suddenly disappearing without a trace. There was a hole in the ceiling now, and the Point Man immediately peered down into a creepy crypt. There were shelves below to shield his fall, and he dived down.

"That was a psychic outburst from Alma Wade," Jin replied helpfully. "She'll leave us alone until she feels like it again. Which, I guess, is pretty soon." The F.E.A.R. medic gingerly climbed down the hole, pausing momentarily to see Holiday nervously staring around.

"You okay, Douglas?" she asked quietly. Holiday looked at her for a few moments before smiling, and accepting her hand in making their way down the hole.

"Jin, do you always make bullshit up?"

"Only when the situation demands it," Jin smiled. The two held each others' arms for a moment, glancing at the mute killing machine as he fearlessly walked down the badly lit corridor. Then they followed him.


	2. Interval 1b: Blasphemy

Holiday gulped in shallow breaths, his nostrils having glued shut in protest. The crypt smelled like the locker room back at HQ after a garbage truck had plowed into it. Angry rats skittered away from the glare of his headlamp, illuminating a damp hallway through which the point man lumbered. He and Jin followed, their boots crunching against fallen bricks and evangelical pamphlets.

Man, he'd kill to have the big guy's mask. It wasn't like the killing machine needed it.

"This is a brilliant opportunity," Jin said, a smile thinly playing upon her smooth lips. "We've never had a Class Z-Gamma-43 incident before."

Holiday raised an eyebrow at the lingo. "You've fought ghosts before?"

"Sub-lethal telesthetic signatures only. Mostly harmless."

"Hang on," he said, patting the woman's slender shoulder and swiveling her around to face him. "Define 'mostly', 'cause the ghost we're up against sure ain't Casper's sister."

"The last phantasmic manifestation we encountered was an old teacher." She delicately pried his hand away. "She'd left a residual imprint on her classroom that caused the narcolepsy rate at that school to triple. Colonel Betters brought us in after his daughter fell asleep in class."

Holiday bit back an obligatory remark. "So what, you just barged in there with proton packs and blasted away?"

She giggled softly and shook her head. "No, we just got Jankowski in as a janitor and wiped up all the ectoplasm."

"So you killed this ghost with a mop?" said Holiday, his eyes focused on the broken marble tomb that the trio was now walking past. A plaque lay on its side, depicting a portly man without his head along with the text: _Here lies STEVE CARPENTER, wine connoisseur tragically taken from us by his love of wine._

"Technically it was a Heavy-Duty Electro-Magnetic Residue Obliterator, but we lost the specimen." She sighed, greenish eyes set upon the Point Man's large frame as he broke down a wooden door. "They never let me do the field work…"

Darkness suddenly plunged as Holiday's headlamp died, and he instinctively clenched the Point Man's back for support. Invisible figures, swift and itchy, rustled past his face. He coughed in vain, trying to clear his mouth of dust that had flown in. Distorted screams echoed across the broken masonry, accompanied by bright flashes and the ricochets of bullets.

His lamp turned back on to reveal a pale, slender woman. "Jesus Christ!" he whispered, almost ventilating Jin's face then and there.

"Did you swallow?" she said, eyes narrowed in concern.

"No," he coughed. "My mouth naturally tastes like a foot-rag." They rounded the corner, finding a doorway illuminated by an unhealthily weak torch.

"That was a paranormal manifestation. Ingesting such particles gives nasty side-effects – lung irritation, nausea, bowel loosening-"

"That's more than I needed to know," Holiday said. The Point Man halted, and suddenly crouched against the door's right side. Jin immediately slunk behind a niche, while Holiday brought his rifle to bear and pinned himself opposite to the combat operative.

Silence passed for a moment. It continued for a longer moment. The Delta signaled for the FEAR operator to move in, only to receive the same impassive stare through crimson goggles. Sighing to break the tension, Holiday leaned around and nearly tripped over a pair of dead Replicas.

"Well shit," he said. "Seems like these guys wanted to save us the trouble of killing 'em." One clone lay against a vat of pinkish wine, a broken bottle clenched in his hands and his mask drenched in liquid.

Jin bent down, sniffing the damp yellow patch on a clone's balaclava-clad face. "They appear to have choked on their own vomit."

"They swallowed." Holiday said. "I don't get it. Aren't the ghosts on the clones' side?"

"Do the dead like the living?"

"That a trick question?" he muttered, turning his back on the woman. "I ain't got time to decipher cryptic nonsense." He walked ahead, not trusting the mute creep to give him and Jin adequate warning of another ambush.

A maze of hexagonal shelves held countless bottles. Gigantic barrels lay to their left and right, dripping ever-so-small droplets of alcohol from their rusted taps. Fat rats lay drooling on the floor, too inebriated to care when a boot inadvertently crushed their tails. Holiday ducked beneath a cobweb, which made the spider very happy, and paused at the stairwell leading upwards.

"Hold up." Tip-toeing upstairs, he peeked through the keyhole. A cheap, garishly-painted store room lay ahead, bereft of enemies. He tried the doorknob. It clicked, but refused to move.

"Fuck it." He turned around to find the grimly masked Point Man only inches away from his face. "FUCK!"

"Maybe you should let him open the door," Jin said, her smile wider than ever.

"Sure. Charlie Chaplin, do your business." Holiday bowed away, and nearly fell over as the FEAR operator swooped into the air and jump-kicked the metal door off its hinges. Jin's soft clapping filled the musty air.

His face burning, Holiday scrabbled to his feet and began peering through the next door. An entire hallway full of lurid paintings, creepily-detailed statues of crucified men and upside-down crosses lay before them. A Pair of rooms was visible to the sides, containing furniture lovingly draped over with moth-eaten curtains.

There were also ten clones in there, silently stomping around and toting weapons as big as Jin's torso.

Holiday straightened up and looked at his compatriots. "Here's the battle plan: I'll provide suppressive fire while Jin takes cover and Gordon Freeman soaks up the-" he blinked and then the Point Man was already out there, filling the building with a choir of screams. Jin smirked and closed her eyes.

"It's like Beethoven," she said, "Only a little more graphic."

Growling, the Delta rushed out and stumbled right into a warzone. A head rolled down to him, trailing a crimson path leading to its mutilated owner. One clone had been smashed head-first through the plaster wall, leaving only his legs to stick out. Another pair of hapless soldiers lay in pools of their own blood, caressing each other tenderly. Spent rounds carpeted the floor and a smiley-face was stenciled over a picture of a red-clad Mary.

"I'M EXPOSED!" a lone Replica screamed, rushing out from beneath a curtain to club Holiday. The man unloaded his rifle at close range.

"So are your guts." He said to the corpse. The soldier didn't laugh on account of his lungs having been pulverized.

They found the Point Man a few minutes later, playing basketball with a severed head.

"Good god!" Holiday bent away, biting back the urge to puke. He turned around to see Jin batting her eyelashes at the Point Man, her eyes wide and her lips parted. Then he vomited.

"What's the matter, Lieutenant?" Jin leered. "You've never seen FEAR in action?"

"I've never worked with psychos before."

"You never saw Jankowski on a bad day…" she replied, tilting her head to glance sideways at him.

"Last time I worked with you guys, I had to pull his ass outta the fire."

"Guess who provided you cover?" Jin crossed her arms, conspicuously flexing her red index fingers. "There was a reason why no one heard a couple of grown men clomping through the dead of night."

"You're a sniper?" he visualized the petite woman holding a gun taller than her, and chuckled. "Shit, I thought FEAR only hired you to fill the ethnic quota."

"I was. Then they kicked me down to examining bodies other people killed."

A sharp rapping cut in and Holiday saw the Point Man trembling like a closed pot, his feet beating a tattoo on the floor. "What," he asked the tongueless man. "You can't hold it in?"

"I think we should keep going." Jin said, pulling open the double-doors and revealing yet another nave. This one contained a baptismal font upon the altar, which looked over the rows of pews like a disapproving schoolmarm. After taking a moment to assure that there were no clones they were interrupting, the trio went forward.

"I'm not the best Catholic," Holiday said, pointing at the stained glass window to their right "But I don't think Jesus got shot in the head."

"High-level psychics can manipulate particles in our world," Jin said. "Seems like Fettel's gained a little messiah complex."

"I died," burbled the red water inside the baptismal. Holiday braced himself, instinctively shielding Jin and cowering behind the Point Man. "And behold I am alive forevermore." Before their eyes, a pair of pasty arms tore out from the bowl and a naked Fettel stumbled out. As he lifted a thin leg, the bowl tipped over and he flopped out like a broken fish.

"My cup runneth over…" he mumbled, levitating above the dumbstruck mortals. It was then that Holiday noticed the gaping hole in his crotch. "So, brother, my dearest Judas, why have you brought the simpering female and the Moorish brute along?"

"Don't even go there, Beetlejuice" Holiday snarled, aiming his gun upon the translucent figure. The man laughed wheezily and with a loud pop his commander uniform rematerialized upon him.

"Douglas," Jin was awfully quiet. "He's dead. Save your bullets."

"Now you may wonder: to what end will this affair achieve?" Fettel crossed his legs and rested his carnivorous face upon his spidery fingers. "And to that the answer has slipped my mind. No thanks to YOU!"

The Point Man nodded, calmly reloading his weapon. Holiday glanced worryingly at the throbbing hole in the ghost's head.

"Suppose this city is a stage," the ghost continued, not noticing that the trio was now stomping towards the exit. "Ms. Kwon may play the lovely Desdemona, and I the conniving Iago. The moor can play Othello, and my brother's skin shall carpet the floor."

"Shut him up," Holiday told the Point Man, and the mute obliged by shooting off his brother's tongue. Gurgling in incoherent fury, the disfigured ghost screamed out "MOMM!" and popped out of sight with a sound unlike a backwards cough.

"That confirms my suspicions about Fettel being lobotomized." Jin rubbed her chin, eyes cast down in thought. Holiday gazed around, wondering if a squadron would burst out from behind the windows.

"Wouldn't that make him easier?"

"It'll make him more unpredictable. Just because we've got a hunk on our side doesn't guarantee our survival."

"You're real optimistic."

Jin rested a hand on her hip and gave an ambiguous glance at the Delta. "I wouldn't mind dying – it'd confirm a few of my theories."

They were interrupted, once more, by the sound of forty heavy-caliber bullets being unloaded into a wooden pew. As desperate clicking filled the air, the two turned around to see the Point Man shakily waving his gun at the spectral figure of a little child. She turned, eyes as black as a bee's, and whimpered.

"Please – I hurt me. Me don't want hurt me. I want kill you but I don't."

The two back rows of pews suddenly lit on fire, and the chandelier exploded. Plunged into hazy darkness, Holiday stumbled back to the altar and saw a naked woman casually walking through the flames. Charred and bloated, she looked for the entire world like a zombie who'd never cut her hair. Her rotten lips curled up in a smile that'd frighten any dentist, and with a single gesture the rest of the pews flew to the ceiling and fed the choking flames that were descending from the ceiling.

"I kill you," the little girl lifted a finger, and the trio suddenly fell into darkness. Her tiny voice echoed in their minds. "But I don't kill you."

A blue light, brighter than any sun, enveloped their vision and spewed out a sea of absurd monstrosities. Holiday tried to back away, ignoring the futility of not having a physical body to move, and failed to prevent a star-struck Jin from stepping into the light and dissolving out of sight.

"You no fun," the child hissed. "You go with son. Bad boy. Very bad."

Then his stomach dropped.

* * *

><p>Holiday opened his eyes, feeling like he'd just swallowed an ocean of tequila. The cold, unforgiving red goggles of the Point Man stared back at him, illuminated by an ashen sky. The church lay to his right, burning brighter than hell itself.<p>

"This better be just purgatory," Holiday muttered before falling back into oblivion.

* * *

><p>Jin rubbed her eyes, shaking off the effects of rematerialization. When she glanced up, there were twenty shotguns pinned against her head, chest, butt, knees or toes. Twenty confused clones stared at her for a moment, before twenty radio messages crackled in her ears.<p>

"Command, we've apprehended the woman."

Jin smiled as they tied her up. She'd never examined the Replicas so close before.


End file.
